Friday, August 10, 2007

A "prominent progressive leader" speaks out

I've written before (here and here) about the ludicrous campaign by Democrats and their fellow travelers, both liberal and conservative, to hijack the word "progressive". As I mentioned there, Normal Solomon wrote to the co-director of the Campaign for America's Future to ask why Hillary Clinton's name was mentioned in the context of "prominent progressive leaders", and the response was that "some people do consider Hillary progressive"--which led me to joke, ha ha ha, that the people he's talking about apparently
live on Mars or perhaps in deep caves under the ocean floor, completely
cut off from any conduit of information.

But I was wrong; at least one of them lives in New York. Here's Hillary Clinton describing her preferred political classification in the recent CNN/YouTube debate:

CLINTON: I prefer the word
"progressive," which has a real American meaning, going back to the
progressive era at the beginning of the 20th century.

I consider myself a modern progressive,
someone who believes strongly in individual rights and freedoms, who
believes that we are better as a society when we're working together
and when we find ways to help those who may not have all the advantages
in life get the tools they need to lead a more productive life for
themselves and their family. So I consider myself a proud modern
American progressive, and I think that's the kind of philosophy and
practice that we need to bring back to American politics.

Obviously this isn't the end of the world, but it's been useful to have a one-word moniker to describe myself and like-minded folk, despite the limitations. What do we do once the Democrats have completely tarnished it? Maybe we should just start reclaiming "liberal" the way homosexuals have reclaimed "queer"; I actually try to do this already in my own small way whenever someone asks me if I'm a Democrat, to which I usually reply, "No, I'm not a Democrat, I'm a liberal."